Examples

Tonight, justbeast, grailquestion and I will be boarding the good ship Persephone and beginning our own katabasis-in-minature: downdowndown, down the Mississippi for 16 days, with stops at Our Lady of the Rivers, Mark Twain's hometown, and othe points of interest, but mainly zenning and communing with the river gods, whosoever and wheresoever they may be.

Julian -- or (as more disastrous than any of them, and in point of space as well as in amount of forces, more extensive,) the Russian anabasis and katabasis of Napoleon. 3dly, That of a religious Exodus, authorized by an oracle venerated throughout many nations of Asia, an Exodus, therefore, in so far resembling the great Scriptural Exodus of the

The katabasis is of course an immensely rich literary topos: Virgil had his hero visit the Underworld in Aeneid 6; there's the Ovidian version of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice; there's Dante; there's The Harrowing of Hell in the York mystery plays.

Vows and marital rites are simple ceremony (i think) put upon a natural human inclination, to pair up, have and raise kids, suffer the hardships of lives with a reliable partner through the thick and thin, have something solid to fall back on in the inevitable moments of katabasis, and so on (like those crazy loons).